


sophomore slump

by crackers4jenn



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-25 18:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17126771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackers4jenn/pseuds/crackers4jenn
Summary: My version of episode 2x01. It becomes clear right from the get-go my brain did not travel in the same direction Dan Harmon's brain did.





	sophomore slump

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on livejournal in October of 2010.

Annie's the first to show up, and she can't help it. She smiles when she enters their study room. It's cold with the AC turned up and the vents open, and it smells musty, like the rest of the library, but Annie feels breathless with happiness as she pulls out her chair, settling in. 

If something in that moment feels different, Annie chocks it up to the new feeling of not having her backpack with her. That's right! Greendale 2010 is going to be a year without a backpack. A year with no freak-outs. Totally, completely unstructured. 

Troy and Pierce enter at the same time, in the middle of what sounds like an argument. 

"--you singing along to my music makes me want to take my music and throw it in a lake, and you _know_ how I feel about lakes."

"It's catchy!"

"Yeah! For me! For you, catchy is old dudes on piano, or anything by Barry Manilow."

Pierce waves this away with a dismissive flick of his wrist. "Balls."

"AND THAT." Troy's eyes bug out. "Stop talking like me!"

"I'll talk any old way I want to, skillet! You can't muzzle this piece!"

Annie's already on her feet for a welcoming hug. She swings her arm in a wide arc, the "Hello!" at the tip of her tongue, but both Pierce and Troy drop into their seats with matching melodramatic huffs and zero acknowledgment. 

"Hey," she says, with a small, confused, don't-be-hurt-Edison-do-not-be-hurt smile.

"S'up," Pierce mutters with minimal emotion, and Troy gives him a mean glare.

Annie gently lowers back into her seat, face pulled into a perplexed, disappointed frown. 

"Soooo," she tries, pepping right back up. "Good summer?"

As one, Pierce says, "It was alright," while Troy, still sullen, answers, "No."

There's a pause.

Then:

"Worst summer ever," says Pierce, at the same time that Troy goes, "Pierce ruined pie for me. _And_ flutes."

Proudly, Pierce grins. "I introduced him to a cinematic classic. The _American Pie_ series."

"A dude," Troy recalls with great emotional intensity of the I'm-about-to-hurl kind, "stuck his wiener in a pie. IN. A. PIE."

"Ah," Pierce laughs, "who hasn't?"

While Annie's spritzing some mental Lysol onto her brain to douse away that imagery, Abed slinks into the room. He slaps palms with Troy as he takes off his satchel and sits down in his usual seat, waving at Annie.

"Hey," he greets.

"Abed!" Annie bursts out with, genuinely beaming. "It's so good to see you!"

"Likewise."

"You look..." She searches her word-bank, coming up blank, because there's something different about him. Bolder, maybe, like he's carrying himself in a way they've never really seen before. And definitely there's some confidence there.

"You're probably referring to my chosen sophomore character. I call it: Jeff Winger, 2.0."

Something in Annie's stomach drops. There's this flood of feelings that surfaces, memories of last year's transfer dance. Of that hugely romantic kiss with Jeff that was, well, the beginning and end of their hugely romantic moment. She hasn't talked to him since. 

Laughing, almost a little too forcefully, she asks, "Excuse me?"

"Oh. I'm not going to reenact Jeff's arc from last year. His results wouldn't really work for me."

"Tell me about it," Troy agrees. "Watching Britta and Slater act all insane-in-the-membrane over each other made me realize that, yo, I do NOT want to be Jeff right now. I mean, you think it'd be cool, having girls throw themselves at you. But turns out, there's a reallllll difference between girls throwing sexy thoughts your way and girls dropping the L-bomb on you in a semi-crowded cafeteria at your school's Tranny Dance."

Pierce laughs, gesturing just so. "Ah, there's nothing wrong with women salivating in a competition for your body. Trust me. In my time--"

"Yeahhh, see, here's the thing. No one at this table actually _cares_ about your time. VH-1 doesn't even care about your time, because it's not like anyone's saying, you know what I love? I Love The 40's."

Pierce gasps. "40's? How dare you! Who do you think I am, Dick Clark?"

"Who IS that? Why are you old people always talking about other old people like I'm supposed to know who they are?!"

Nobody notices Britta until her books are dropped onto the table. It's loud, and it seems hostile, and Annie, already feeling this roll of guilt in her stomach, looks up and half expects Britta to be holding up fists, ready to throw down. For, you know. The whole Jeff thing.

But instead she's smiling, and her face is so happy and open that Annie's turmoil evaporates, right there. 

Britta jerks her hands back and forth with brimming emotion. "Annie!" she cries out, and Annie stands and scoots around the table for a hug, smiling the whole way.

When they pull apart, Britta says, "We missed you!" And then, more sternly, "Please tell me you didn't get bolted down with summer classes because of Vaughn."

"I guess I just figured, you know. It was summer. Summer equals time away from friends. So that the bonds of friendship only grow."

An awkward silence hits the group, with everyone looking at Annie like she's crazy.

"Uh, no," says Troy, "that's how people who _don't_ have friends spend their summer vacation. That's why you see so many people coming back hotter than they were the year before. So they don't have to repeat another summer of being a nerd."

"Oh," Annie says, feeling ridiculous.

"The three of us hung out," Abed tells her. "And sometimes Shirley."

As Annie sinks back into her chair, she smooths out her skirt and asks, "Where _is_ Shirley? She's usually here by now."

"Morning classes," Britta reminds her, and Annie let's out an automatic "Ohhhh" before she remembers _why_ Shirley has those morning classes.

Like they're all thinking the same thing, everyone glances towards Jeff's empty seat.

Britta scoffs, "He's not showing."

"What do you mean?!" Realizing that she sounds a little too... _much_ , Annie calms herself. Acts indifferent. "How do you know? Maybe he's just--"

"A huge jerk that hasn't kept in touch with anyone outside the noncommittal text? I know Jeff. I know his kind. He thrives on drama, until it messes with his finely tuned brand of aloofness."

"Jeff, Jeff, Jeff," Pierce complains. "That's all anyone ever talks about! 'Britta loves Jeff.' 'Jeff loves penises.' How about what I did on my summer vacation? Anyone even want to ask about that?"

" _Noooo_ ," the group answers as one, because: it's Pierce. Debauchery is bound to be included. 

But Pierce just talks over their lackluster blow-offs, saying, "Fell into a sexually aggressive relationship with a curvy mistress by the name of--"

"NO," Britta loudly interrupts, like she's scolding her hordes of cats. It's enough for Pierce to silence himself, though he does it by petulantly tossing his weight around. "And for the record," she adds, with effort, "I don't _love_ Jeff. What you saw at the transfer dance was a low point that I hope we can all move past, and forget."

"If Shirley were here," Abed notes, after a few seconds of uncontested silence, "she'd say something to imply otherwise." A beat. "I miss Shirley."

"True up," mutters Pierce, to the annoyance of everyone.

 

****

 

Annie's on her way to Anthropology--fifteen minutes early--when she spots Jeff, at a bench. She can't help it; she stops. Right there, mid-step. Someone bumps into her from behind, but she hardly notices. 

And then Jeff sees her. His face flies so fast through emotions, she can hardly catch them all. But he lands on 'tense', and that's what propels her forward. He didn't show up. He knew where they would be, and he didn't show. She doesn't owe him anything.

She glides past him with no acknowledgment whatsoever, keeping her head high, her shoulders square. She's not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing she feels hurt.

But Jeff just slides into place next to her, tall enough that he blocks out the afternoon sun, wrapping her whole face in shadows.

"I had to kick Garrett off that bench. Can you believe he's still using the word 'chillaxing'? I don't want to start any rumors, but 2009 called. They want their word back."

She doesn't do anything to respond. She barely even blinks. Just keeps walking, her mouth pinched thin. If Britta were here to see this, she'd be totally proud.

All Jeff says is, "Fine," and abruptly he heads in the opposite direction. And it should feel great, or at the very least, productive, because the whole point of ignoring someone is to get them to leave you alone, but--

She turns around and screws her eyes shut and calls out, "Wait!"

He faces her with something close to a real emotion. Like putting on an act just isn't worth it anymore.

"Where were you?" she asks, and maybe it's a little bit more revealing than she would've liked.

But just like that, his Greendale persona slips back into place. Walking back towards her with some of his usual maybe-I-don't-actually-go-here bravado, he starts to smirk. "Chillaxing."

"You weren't at the table."

"Annie, it's the first day of class. Technically, I'm not obligated to join your Anthropology study group until I've been hit with my first homework assignment."

She knows he's deflecting. She knows his reasons for not showing up are similar to her reasons for proving that she _could_ show up, only different, and more.

As they move along, he looks down at her, sidelong with a real smile this time. "How was your summer? Any big regrets, like, oh, I don't know. Not becoming hackey sack royalty?"

"I did what I always do. I sat at home, alone, and listened to Celine Dion."

" _I_ watched every episode of The Deadliest Catch. More than once."

"And then I thought about what I might be doing if I'd left for Delaware."

"Duh. Braiding Team Vaughn hemp bracelets for the groupies."

She laughs a little, and with it, some of her earlier mistrust slips away. But then she sighs. "I could've been that much closer to transferring to a real college. And instead I'm back here. At Greendale. Where I'm taking an Anthropology class because I wanted so bad for everyone to stick together, and be friends, and now, like some big, _hilarious_ cosmic joke, we're experiencing study group turmoil. And it's only the first day!"

"Dire," he obliges, the sarcasm so dry, she only catches it because his mouth quirks up into a small smirk.

"Jeff! I'm serious!"

"Well, what did you expect? Last year ended on a note of true, soul-sucking catastrophe."

Playing it casual, she avoids eye contact and wonders, "Is that why you never called?"

The implied being: _what kind of poorly raised derelict are you that you couldn't even muster a 'sorry, not mature enough to deal with this right now :)' text message after we kiss? Instead I'm left hanging, and wondering, and dreaming up every existing possible scenario for the months of radio silence, and meanwhile you're busy... perfecting your tan and catching Discovery Channel marathons?_

Jeff grows all stern, though, breathing out a warning in the form of: "Annie..."

When they get to the classroom, bantering over likely summer activities Pierce engaged in ("It's _Pierce._ Escorts HAD to be involved." / "You think so?" / "I really do, and that's the worst part."), Annie offers up a friendly, parting smile, abnormally pleased that things with Jeff have defaulted back to normal. 

She heads for a lab table setting up front, taking the nearest empty seat. It's as she's arranging her few brought belongings--paper, of course, and both a pen and a pencil, some blank note cards, her digital recorder because she'll probably wind up missing a key point--she notices Jeff slide onto the stool beside her.

She must be frowning, because he leans in and explains, on a disgusted groan, " _Starburns_." Who is two tables back, but he's got a group of people surrounding him, like some weird posse. 

Annie grimaces.

" _Exactly,_ " Jeff says.

She's angling her newly bought binder when Pierce comes in. And straight away, he spots Jeff. There's this silent moment of mutual recognition before Pierce puffs up his chest and struts their way.

"Well, well. Look who it is."

"Pierce," Jeff tonelessly greets.

"Here fresh off your penis-float from your gay pride parade?"

"Why, is there still a ring of body glitter around my mouth?"

"I ask because you weren't at our table meeting this morning, and naturally that's the first thing I assumed that made any real sense."

"I had _sex_ with your _step-daughter_."

Annie pulls a strong EWWWW-face at Jeff's gross reminder.

"Ex," Pierce haughtily corrects, slipping onto a stool at the table directly behind them. Louder, and more indifferent, he recalls, " _And_ she had the helmet hair of a transgendered, bi-curious man. So suck on that! Or, bite me. Maybe it's 'eat my shorts, fruit cup'?"

Jeff leans into Annie's personal space, quietly wondering, "Alright. Who taught him the out-dated comebacks?"

Annie commiserates, "He spent a whole summer with _Troy_. Remember?"

"Great. We have SO MUCH to look forward to."

"Earlier," Annie says, becoming enthused with this whisper-swapping scenario, with how little space is between them, with Jeff's reasonably assumed to be flirty smile, "as we were leaving the library, he said the word _zoinko._ "

"What the hell is 'zoinko'?"

"I don't know!" Annie laughs.

From behind, Pierce shouts at them, "Ahhhhh-ha! I'd recognized that trepid look on your face anywhere. Coming out of the rainbow-painted closet, Jeffrey?"

Jeff swings his head around to glare. "Bite me."

"You'd like that. Wouldn't you?"

There's this weird and sudden shift in the air, and with one glance at the doorway, it becomes really obvious why. Britta's standing there. At the sight of Jeff sitting beside Annie, all friendly and casual with not a trace of post-Transfer Dance discomfort, Britta's whole face goes slack with surprise. But just as quick, it hardens with a forced indifference.

She moves toward them with a noticeable stiffness. "Oh. Hey. _Jeff_."

"Heyyyy. _Britta_."

"Ah. So you're playing it 'coolly detached'."

"Maybe."

"Funny, because I didn't actually see you at study group this morning."

"Was that _this_ morning?"

Britta drops the act and breathes out a sigh. "Okay, you know what? I had a whole summer to think about what a clown I made of myself last year, and the one thing I resolved was that I wasn't going to be held oppressive by my own bizarre behavior. So are we cool or what?"

Jeff peers at her through skeptical eyes. "I don't know," he decides, enjoying the power tilted in his favor. "Could you try pitching that in front of the whole class first?"

"I don't know," she throws back. "Could you try not being a jerk?" But it's with a smile.

"Jeff!" Troy all of a sudden greets from the open door of the classroom, in a deep, manly rumble. The " _what uppppp_!" that follows is less masculine.

Jeff accepts Troy's given fist-bump with some profound feelings: shame and embarrassment, mostly.

"Hey, Jeff," greets Abed, following after Troy. "Your hair looks awesome."

Jeff breathes out a modest laugh. "Yeah," he says, just that. All weirdly proud.

Abed copies Jeff's exact reaction, which has Britta glowering back and forth between the two of them.

"What the hell am I missing here?" she demands.

"Jeff Winger," Abed exhales. "Two-point-oh."

"Uhhh," Britta awkwardly laughs, while Jeff stares back with his most disturbed-but-secretly-flattered face. "What?"

Troy busts out an explanation. "Abed's trying out Jeff's character for a while. At first I was like: man, this is gonna suck. Is Jeff gonna be Abed? Because no way does Jeff have the range to pull that off."

" _Thanks_." 

"Then I realized, nah. Abed's still Abed, even when he's NOT being Abed, 'cause that's what _MAKES_ him Abed. Know what I mean?"

"No." 

"Not really." 

"I could not be more lost if I got here by GPS, and we all know how big of a consumer rip-off those are, right?" 

"Abed's boinking who now?"

 

****

 

"So that's it, then. He's back in. Just like that."

Britta lets out a we-have-had-this-conversation-one-too-many-times sigh. "Shirley..."

"Oh, no. Don't mind me. Just looking out for a friend's romantically rejected back, that's all."

Jeff tries to shrink away from the wrath of Shirley's withering glare, but since they are all shoulder-to-shoulder in some child-sized booth (thanks a lot, Greendale), all he manages to do is lean into Annie. Who, of course, glows a little at the personal contact, all the while trying to maintain a grim outer-appearance, because, well. Maybe she considers herself to also be among the romantically rejected.

"I didn't _reject_ anyone," Jeff contends, lamely.

Shirley's glare darkens. "You're a grown ass man. You might wanna try and remember that. Starting with accepting responsibility for your actions at a certain transfer event where a certain member of our study group confessed certain feelings for you--publicly putting herself out there, in front of all our peers... only to be humiliated... it takes _courage_ to come back and face the man who shot her down--"

"Okay," Britta cuts in, clearly over this topic. "Got it. Thank you."

"Yeahhhhh," Jeff drawls with both skepticism and his default cynicism. "I'm not going to apologize for something that's not my fault."

Shocked gasps color the air. Could it be that Jeff has reverted back to 'soulless douchebag'?!

"Booyah," agrees Abed.

" _Because_ ," Jeff adds, pointedly, "I'm not going to do it just because the group voted for it."

Disappointed, Troy stuffs the anonymously written on 'for' or 'against' index cards back into his binder; the results of their previously given 'Should Jeff Apologize to Britta For His Tranny Dance Diss?' poll.

"Whatever," insists Britta. "Guys, it's cool."

"If I _was_ going to apologize," Jeff says, "it would be for leaving things unfinished. And not saying how I really feel."

Nobody notices his gaze flicking over to Annie's. Except Annie, of course, whose whole chest fills up with hope.

Shirley, though, clasps her hands together. "I KNEW IT. Jeff still likes Britta! PRAYERS DO GET ANSWERED." 

Jeff, Annie, and Britta gape as one. "What?!" they cry, a collection of what-the-fuckery, scandal, and second-hand embarrassment.

Shirley, realizing she has outed herself as some overzealous _Dear baby-and-all-other-sizes Jesus, please let Britta and Jeff resume a relationship that's already been consummated all over our study group table!_ prayer enthusiast, immediately reels it back in, voice all hollowed out as she says, "Well clearly that's just a bunch of nonsense."

"Uh, yeah," scoffs Britta. "If there WAS a God to pray to, like He'd wanna dabble in our pathetic love lives. Please. There's a pretty corrupt world out there to worry about first."

"Spoken like a true Ellen," Pierce comments, receiving, of course, glares and outrage. "What?!" he defends. "It's a culturally current reference for 'lesbian', ask anyone."

"And on that colorful note," Jeff marvels. "Britta, I'm..." 

There is a clear inner-struggle going on. On one hand: apologizing? Not the Winger way. On the other hand: Jeff _has_ grown up a lot. And it _has_ been three months of strong denial that anything worth repressing even happened.

"Spit it out already!" Pierce complains. Then, just this side of a murmur, in the least subtle voice ever: "Besides, we all know you're not the swallowing type."

Cue: more groans.

"C'mon. With that hair?" Pierce is quick to fight back, like there is some oral science in the coiffed way Jeff styled his bedhead that morning.

"Ugh. Alright. I'm _sorry_ ," Jeff gives in, if only for the sake of getting Pierce to NEVER TALK AGAIN. "Can this end now?"

Britta practically preens, though she plays it diplomatically. "Like I said. It's cool. I am totally, totally okay with--"

"Being the human equivalent of a motel-grade ice machine?"

" _ABED_!" cries THE ENTIRE GROUP, in varying tones of horror, and that's _including_ Pierce.

Abed simply shrugs: Winger 2.0. This is the harsh reality, people.

Jeff reacts with an offended and dismissive, "Pffft. I would _never_ \--"

"You would," Britta cuts in, point blank.

"You're like a white Tyler Perry," Shirley says, "if Tyler Perry had occasional mean streaks and a more dry sense of humor."

"Yeah, Jeff," Annie agrees, in her _just stating the facts!_ way. "Sometimes you can be abrasive."

"Really?" he drawls, and there's an angry edge to it. "Because, oh. Look here, in my pocket." He pretends to take out a note, which he then mimes unfolding, reading from it a loud and bitter, "SCREW YOU."

"Zinger," breathes out Abed appreciatively.

Troy adds, " _Winger_ zinger." His eyes widen. "That just wrinkled my brain."

"No, Troy," snarks Jeff, "it wrinkled _all_ our brains."

 

****

 

Jeff hangs back until he and Annie are the last ones to drag themselves from their booth seating.

"Can we talk?" he asks, and she gives the rest of the group a reassuring, _there's definitely nothing strange about this!_ smile.

Once they're alone, and re-settled, Jeff grips with the right thing to say. What he wants to get at is: him and Annie are friends. Not even reluctant ones, like how he rationalizes his interaction with Pierce. And screwing that up would suck, and whatever happened after the dance, as awesome as it might have been, probably shouldn't happen again.

"Soooo. What's up?" she says, all wide-eyed and a little bit flirty, like she's casually peeled away his excuses and already gotten to the truth within his hard outer shell, the truth that goes a little something like: Jeff + Annie = WANT.

His whole strategy flies out the window. The paternal speech he was prepared to wing. The varying and repeated lines of "we're pals, pal." The closing head pat, of course, that would've been both patronizing and loaded.

But, still. He tries.

"Last year," he says. "At that horrible, unnamed event. What we did..."

She stares up at him with big, unblinking eyes. Some stray lashes flutter. "Yeah?"

"Us two, with... _you know_."

She laughs. Instead of being the expected twinkly sound of a vampire-obsessed teenager, it's vaguely condescending. "Jeff, we kissed. You can say it."

He rides out a cringe. "Did we? Or did I maul you with my mouth because it was easier to deal with than be a grown-up?"

Some of her good mood starts to slip away. Her smile falters, the cartoon eyes grow in size. A wet gleam forms. 

"Look," he is quick to say. "Even under the right circumstances, we would still be having this conversation. You're _nineteen_. You want to be with someone who understands your pop culture fixations. Who hates 9/11 references, not because they're crass, but because in 2001, you still had a seven o'clock bedtime."

"Jeff," she cuts in. Wearing that frown line on her forehead, like _he's_ the high strung one "Don't worry. We're friends," she insists. And then she pats him on the hand. It's equal parts _ambiguous linger_ and _there, there, my platonic older buddy._

"Awesome," says Jeff, and means it.

 

****

 

As Annie bounces away, flicking a peppy farewell wave towards Jeff, she smiles to herself.

 _Totally, completely unstructured._

And it feels good.

 

THE END.


End file.
